'A lot of baseball left' could be too much

Gwen Knapp

Published
4:00 am PDT, Tuesday, April 8, 2008

The manager and older players talk about heads kept aloft, about battling to the end, about the long season ahead. What else can they say? In a game of inches, this team comes up miles short, and everyone knows it. The Giants are 1-6, and there's not a hint of mirage in their record.

Monday's home opener turned into a limbo contest for expectations, the bar dropping a bit more with each Padre who made solid contact on a Matt Cain pitch. He gave up seven hits and five walks in 41/3 innings, leveling the optimism generated by his start in Los Angeles last Tuesday.

Whenever having Cain or Tim Lincecum on the mound can't buffer the Giants from humiliation, the limbo contest has no place to go but underground. After Monday's 8-4 loss, which was fairly self-explanatory, someone still had to answer for the mess. Hence, the platitudes.

"We have a lot of baseball left," Bruce Bochy said, trying to be encouraging. But in the moment, 155 more games sounded like the punch line, not a plus.

So what about this team, if anything at all, is likely to look better in July than it does now?

He couldn't give specific reasons for why he believes that, but it makes sense that the younger players will settle into a comfort zone and react better than they do now. At this point, some of them react so slowly and awkwardly to a ball, it's hard to believe that they have lasted in professional baseball, at any level.

Nothing that happened in the field Monday was terribly fluky. Spring training and the opening road trip foretold botched plays in the infield and bad angles taken on deep balls. These guys might be as good with the glove as they'll ever be.

Eugenio Velez seems to have the potential for improvement, especially if his job title stabilizes. He has played three positions over six games, and he should be honing his instincts at one spot. He did nice work to start a bases-loaded double play Monday, but he and rookie shortstop Brian Bocock both hesitated on a grounder up the middle, staring at each other as it scooted into the outfield.

Jose Castillo went into a similar freeze on a play at third base, sending the strangest thought reverberating throughout the park: Who ever thought we'd pine for Pedro Feliz?

Aaron Rowand offered another answer to the question: "I think we're going to be a little better with runners in scoring position. Early, you want to prove yourself, and that can work against you. I've been a culprit myself. You get up there with runners in scoring position, and you try to do too much. That's a standard thing, though. That's been true on every team I've been on."

The Giants could have used a poised killer instinct in the first inning, when Greg Maddux floundered. The maestro gave up two hits and two walks, yet the Giants scored only once. Against any pitcher, that would be exasperating. Against Maddux, it was criminal.

He has found the Giants particularly susceptible to his wiles in recent years. In his last six starts against them, he had walked one batter. Not one batter per game. One in all six games combined.

Now, he was handing out two in the same inning, and a couple of exuberant, jittery, newcomers didn't recognize this rare window of vulnerability for what it was. Molina and Rowand knew how to take advantage, hitting a double and a single for the lone run. Velez and Cas- tillo, however, were classic Maddux dupes. Velez grounded into a double play, and Castillo grounded out to end the inning, leaving two runners on.

So Maddux wriggled away and kept getting stronger. How many other, lesser pitchers, will do the same? That's why Bochy's "a lot of baseball left" sounds so unappetizing, like an invitation to a Denny's buffet three hours after closing.